The fallout from Pollard 2.0

[A bad day if you’re Ben-Ami Kadish]

This is bad news for Israel, U.S. Jews and, of course, the United States. Israel was extremely foolish for spying on its most important ally, the United States, in the 1980s, and presumably learned its lesson. But the announcement today that Ben-Ami Kadish, a former U.S. Army mechanical engineered was also spying on the United States on Israel’s behalf from 1979 — 1985 proves it wasn’t just Jonathan Pollard, and his case will no longer be seen as exceptional. Danny Yatom, a legislator and a former head of Israel’s Mossad intelligence agency, predicts that trust will be the major casualty of Kadish’s arrest. On Israeli Army Radio he stated, “I think what primarily bothers the Americans is the feeling that Israel didn’t tell them the whole truth two decades ago, in 1985, when the Pollard affair exploded.”

Worse, Kadish allegedly did it neither for money nor diamonds, nor even because he was asked to. He took it upon himself to slip classified documents to an Israeli consulate worker because he thought he was helping Israel. Israel may try to emphasize this point, but accepting his information makes them no less guilty in American eyes. The U.S. has already demanded official Israeli acknowledgment that Kadish was their agent. This will be harmful to the image of U.S. Jews — the vast majority of which love their country — leading to questions over their loyalty because of a few bad apples.

U.S. Jews working in government positions and the intelligence community are likely to come under increased scrutiny and will find it more difficult to obtain security clearances, despite the common notion (frequently leveled by enemies of both countries) that “Israel is America’s 51st State,” or that the two countries are attached at the hip, and so forth. But heightened suspicions are likely to stay mostly confined to the government and intelligence spheres. It may ricochet into the political arena in other, more subtle ways, although it probably won’t alter the status quo of friendly Israel-U.S. relations. No doubt it will strengthen the arguments of those like Harvard political scientists Mearsheimer and Walt, who issued a scathing critique of the Israel lobby, arguing mainly that U.S. support for Israel has been detrimental to U.S. interests. This will come as good news for the anti-Israel/pro-Palestinian community who want to convince Americans how wrong they were all these years to support Israel.

(Jerusalem Post) — “An 85-year-old former US Army mechanical engineer was arrested Tuesday on charges he slipped classified documents about nuclear weapons to an employee of the Israeli Consulate who also received information from convicted Pentagon spy Jonathan Pollard, US authorities announced. Ben-Ami Kadish was charged in US District Court in Manhattan with four counts of conspiracy, including allegations that he disclosed US national defense documents to Israel and acted as an agent of the Israeli government… A criminal complaint said Kadish confessed to FBI agents on Sunday that he had given the Israeli between 50 and 100 classified documents and accepted no cash in return, only small gifts and occasional dinners for him and his family. Kadish admitted to the charges in court, saying that he wanted to help Israel…” Click for full article